Aleksandr Dorokhovsky
Aleksandr Yakovlevich Dorokhovsky (Russian: Александр Яковлевич Дороховский; September 3, 1893 - May 14, 1971) was a Imperial Russian Army officer in World War I and a White Army officer in the Russian Civil War. Early life and family Aleksandr Dorokhovsky was born on September 3, 1893 in the town of Poshekhonye in Russia, where his family owned a large estate going back many generations. His parents were of the lower untitled nobility in Russian society, with Yakov Ilyich Dorokhovsy (1861-1919) being a retired lawyer and a successful landowner. Yeléna Dmitriyevna Dorokhovskaya (neé. Alsakhanova; 1865-1919) was of partial Baltic German descent and was connected to the Estonian aristocracy. Dorokhovsky attended the Saint Petersburg Imperial University in 1910, where he studied at the Faculty of Law to become a lawyer like his father. While enrolled, he became a Kadet in the socially liberal Constitutional Democratic Party and held constitutional monarchist sympathies. As a result of poor performance at school, he was dismissed from the university in 1911 after his first year. The same year, he was able, primarily through family connections, to attend the Saint Petersburg Infantry School, which he graduated in 1913 with an officer's commission in the Imperial Russian Army. While still a cadet, Dorokhovsky was given the particular honor afforded to few by being temporarily appointed to the royal family's personal bodyguard as they traveled around the country during the Romanov Tercentenery celebrations. Military career World War I Dorokhovsky was commissioned as a Junior Lieutenant in on August 20, 1913. His first posting was the Russian Imperial Guards' famed Semyonovsky Regiment, part of the 1st Brigade of the 1st Guards Infantry Division. His first year of military service was mostly spent doing garrison duties in Saint Petersburg. However, during the July Crisis in the month prior to the war, Lieutenant Dorokhovsky and his regiment were placed on full alert and stood ready to deploy in the event of a military conflict. On August 1, 1914, the Russian Empire declared war on the German Empire, and the Imperial Army immediately commenced offensive preparations. However, much to Dorokhovsky's surprise, he was not deployed with his regiment but transferred temporarily to the 101st Infantry Regiment of the 26th Infantry Division based in Grodno, where he was assigned a combat command. Dorokhovsky and his unit marched west with the Russian Army, invading East Prussia in the face of little resistance. However, when the Russians stopped to rest, they came under a heavy German attack in the Battle of Stallupönen. Lieutenant Dorokhovsky and his men made a fighting retreat to avoid encirclement, counterattacking alongside reinforcements the next day to recapture the town from the Germans. Dorokhovsky and the 26th Division suffered a further attack in the Battle of Gumbinnen, but they stopped the German advance and forced them to retreat. When news came later in the month that the Germans had surrounded a Russian force to the south, Lieutenant Dorokhovsky and his men rapidly marched to their aid, fighting the Germans the whole way during the Battle of Tannenberg. Advancing from Angerburg, Dorokhovsky led his men to take Rastenburg and engaged the Germans near Bischofstein, but it was too late and the Germans closed the pocket, forcing the surviving Russians into a retreat. Withdrawing back to Angerburg on the Angrapa River, the Russians prepared a defensive line. The 26th Division met a German attack at the First Battle of the Masurian Lakes with Dorokhovsky and his men repelling a German attack and nearly encircling the enemy. However, Russian reverses on the northern and southern flanks made a general retreat inevitable. The Russians were forced entirely out of East Prussia in the next few weeks. Equipment During World War I and the Russian Civil War, Dorokhovsky primarily used the Imperial Russian standard infantry variant of the M1891 Mosin-Nagant rifle, which he picked up from a fallen soldier during the fighting around Tannenberg. He used the weapon, along with its ring-mounted spike bayonet, during the fighting in East Prussia, Galicia, and the Baltic, and later in the campaign in southern Russia. His sidearm, originally issued to him in 1913, was the M1895 Nagant revolver, in the double-action officer's configuration. He also used the Russian M1914 fragmentation grenade. Dorokhovsky brought his Nagant revolver with him to Paris, and kept it in his apartment until his death. Category:Soldiers in World War I Category:Soldiers in the Russian Civil War Category:Soldiers in the Ukrainian War of Independence Category:Russian soldiers